“A witty saying proves nothing.” — Voltaire

“I always have a quotation for everything– it saves original thinking.” — Dorothy Sayers
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Inadmissible:  Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone.   Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay evidence.  There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law…

“But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges’ decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches , human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.” — Ambrose Bierce “The Devil’s Dictionary”

Truly, a fine exercise of logic and pure reasoning……nothing to add, except to remind you to take this, like everything else, with a grain or two of salt, before you decide whether or not it is Truth…..
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(to The Caissons Go Rolling Along)
Scratch the disks, dump the core,        Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor,           Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash.        And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits.                     Mem’ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits          Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash.            And the system is going to crash.
And we’ve also found                              Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down,             And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash.      And the tape drives will crumble in a flash.
Oh, it’s so much fun,                               When the CPU
Now the CPU won’t run                        Can print nothing out but foo,
And the system is going to crash.        The system is going to crash.

— unknown genius poet/hacker

This may not be poetry in the classical sense, though it does fulfill all the technical requirements. I don’t much care how good it may be technically; it’s damn good, whatever it is. I previously printed a poem, whose author escapes me at this moment, that was structurally identical to this, with 3 poems in one. The left column stands alone, as does the right column. Together, they form another complete poem/song, and in doing so have earned my undying admiration……
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LaForge: “On the other hand, I remember everything about the time I got my first pet, a Cirkacian cat.  I was eight.  I remember how funny-looking he was, I remember how excited I was.  It was if it happened yesterday.”
Data: “Perhaps you remember the pleasant memories and forget the unpleasant ones.”
LaForge: “No, sometimes the bad memories can be the most intense of all.”
Data: “It would seem there is no predictable pattern to human memory.”
LaForge: “‘It would seem’.”
— “Violations”, Stardate 45429.3

Memory is a fascinating subject. I’m considered to have a pretty good memory, and it has always served me well, especially when I discovered an important clue to how it functions in humans. You see, I’ve found memory to be just about completely dependent on our will. Think about this; almost everyone I’ve spoken to about this has the same experience. When something is important to you to remember, you will do so. If you don’t particularly care one way or another, your memory may be fuzzy. And if it is something your unconscious mind disagrees with, you will probably not find it when you go looking for it. In other words, memory in humans is almost 100% selective, and the selective criteria are different in each person.

The bottom line is this: if it is important to you, you will remember. Thus, having a good memory can be accomplished very simply. Just make everything you perceive important. Program your mind (which in reality is nothing more than a biological computer) to believe that everything you hear, everything you see, taste, smell, or touch is important to you. If you are persistent, it will become a habit, and you’ll find those memories you wanted were there all along. This little idea has helped me immensely all my life; I applied the attitude toward what I read, beginning at a young age, and now have almost eidetic memory for the printed word; I can often remember where on each page a particular phrase is located, and whether the page is on the left or right side of the open book. This shortens research time greatly.

So, if you’d like to remember the anniversaries, birthdays, and seminal events without fail and without stress, then give this a try. It’s not easy at times; the mind is lazy and requires motivation. If you need motivation, think of the expression on the face of your significant other when you give them their gift on the correct day. In the words of the commercial….priceless……
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I’m a little leery of discussing politics today, but can’t see myself giving in to fear or disillusionment without a fight, so I’ll compromise, and let the quotes speak for me today. These all go together, and would normally form the nucleus of an examination of whatever is currently biting my ass in the political news…….

“The public demands certainties;  it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false.   But there are no  certainties.” — H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), “Prejudice”

“Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom.  For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself; he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.” — Plato (428-348? B.C.)

“If you wants to get elected president, you’ve got to think up some memorable homily so’s school kids can be pestered into memorizin’ it, even if they don’t know what it means.” — Walt Kelly, The Pogo Party

TRAITOR (n.): A person winning an argument with a liberal.

COMMUNIST (n.): A person winning an argument with a conservative.

That’s probably enough to make the point…….if it isn’t clear, just dump it all in and let it percolate; it’ll come to you…..
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I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve caught poetry.

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny:
You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve:
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave:
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.
— James Thomson (1700-1748)
— The Castle of Indolence, Canto ii, Stanza 3

That should take care of that; better than garlic……

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DISCLAIMER: “Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.  Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.  The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader.  The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient.  (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)’ — Ralph Jennings

Well, I guess that’s enough fussing for one day. I’m thinking of substituting this for the lines now in my sig file; what do you think of it?

When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.